FT: perhaps British tabloids are the real secret agents

Henry Mancewonders if the British tabloids (Ed: and Guido Fawkes) are trying to put Corbyn in power – this would happen, not because he is wiser but because his opponents are more stupid – adding “Perhaps they are the real secret agents”.

Last week, the Sun reported that Mr Corbyn met a Czech spy at least three times, starting in 1986. The meetings were noted in a document found in the Czech archives but the Czech archives contradicted the claim that Mr Corbyn had been paid.

Mance continues, “This did not stop the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph from attacking Mr Corbyn and demanding that he allow the release of his Stasi file. Theresa May — the actual prime minister — said he should be “open and transparent”. This noble campaign only petered out when the Stasi archives in Berlin said they could find no evidence of any such file having existed”.

The Skwawkbox site adds that the Times and Fawkes have also published an article by a former Times Prague correspondent that attempts to damn Corbyn by association with the state violence that marred Czechoslovakia’s ‘Velvet Revolution’ transition to democracy. However, inconveniently for the Times and Fawkes, Jeremy Corbyn was one of only four British MPs at the time who felt strongly enough about that violence to sign an Early Day Motion (EDM 210, see snapshot on site) supporting the protesters against the ‘Stalinist bureaucracy’:

Henry Mance believes that Britain’s right-wing newspapers are actually defeating themselves: “Their strategy is now destroying the papers’ credibility. That is why Mr Corbyn did not implode at last year’s election”.

His conclusion: “In this episode, the joke is on the British newspaper industry”.